Smuggler Nation (70 page)

15
. James Morone,
Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 230.

16
. Dennis,
Licentious Gotham
, 143.

17
. Quoted in Sarracino and Scott,
The Porning of America
, 8.

18
. This point is stressed by Dennis,
Licentious Gotham
, 301. Much to the dismay of Comstock’s successor, John Saxton Sumner, New York’s erotic book publishing industry made a dramatic comeback in the 1920s and 1930s. See Jay A. Gertzman,
Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica 1920–1940
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002).

19
. Dennis,
Licentious Gotham
, 250.

20
. Dennis,
Licentious Gotham
, 280.

21
. Dennis,
Licentious Gotham
, 294.

22
. Dennis,
Licentious Gotham
, 277. She notes that expected profits in legitimate publishing, by comparison, were only 10–20 percent.

23
. Dennis,
Licentious Gotham
, 286–87.

24
. The wording of the 1873 law was so broad that any purity crusader must have been pleased: “That no obscene, lewd, or lascivious book, pamphlet, picture, paper, print, or other publication of an indecent character, or any article or thing designed or intended for the prevention of contraception or the procuring of abortion, or any article or thing intended or adapted for any indecent or immoral use or nature, nor any … book, pamphlet, advertisement or notice of any kind giving information, directly or indirectly, where, or how, or of whom, or by what means either of the things before mentioned may be obtained or made … shall be carried in the mail.” Quoted in Beisel,
Imperiled Innocents
, 39–40.

25
. Quoted in Collier,
The Humble Little Condom
, 146.

26
. Janet Farrell Brodie,
Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth Century America
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 210.

27
. T.J.B. Buckingham, “The Trade in Questionable Rubber Goods,”
India Rubber World
, 15 March 1964, 164.

28
. Collier,
The Humble Little Condom
, 138.

29
. Quoted in Tone,
Devices and Desires
, 69.

30
. Robert Jutte,
Contraception: A History
(Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2008), 152.

31
. Brodie,
Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth Century America
, 208.

32
. Jutte,
Contraception
, 131.

33
. Quoted in Jutte,
Contraception
, 131.

34
. Tone,
Devices and Desires
, 38. Also see Linda Gordon,
The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control Politics in America
, 3rd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 33–34.

35
. Quoted in Collier,
The Humble Little Condom
, 146.

36
. For a more detailed account, see Collier,
The Humble Little Condom
, 146–49.

37
. The advertising campaign included a doctor’s endorsement: “Vaseline, charged with four to five grains of salicylic acid, will destroy spermatozoa, without injury to the uterus or vagina.” Quoted in Tone,
Devices and Desires
, 28–29.

38
. As Tone writes, “No reputable company was reckless enough to make contraceptives its primary articles of commerce.” See Tone,
Devices and Desires
, 48.

39
. Collier,
The Humble Little Condom
, 146.

40
. Tone,
Devices and Desires
, 30; 193–95.

41
. Tone,
Devices and Desires
, 47–48.

42
. Collier,
The Humble Little Condom
, 155.

43
. Tone,
Devices and Desires
, 50–51; 103; 184–88; Collier,
The Humble Little Condom
, 154–57.

44
. Collier,
The Humble Little Condom
, 151.

45
. Tone,
Devices and Desires
, xvi, 64–66.

46
. Dorothy Wardell, “Margaret Sanger: Birth Control’s Successful Revolutionary,”
American Journal of Public Health
70, no. 7 (July 1980): 739; Collier,
The Humble Little Condom
, 153.

47
. Tone,
Devices and Desires
, 126–27; Wardell, “Margaret Sanger,” 741.

48
. See especially Tone,
Devices and Desires
, 32–36.

49
. Tone,
Devices and Desires
, 27–28.

50
. Collier, for example, cites two turn-of-the-century surveys, one in New York and the other in Boston, in which a large percentage of the women respondents reported regular use of birth control. Collier,
The Humble Little Condom
, 174.

51
. On birthrates and their relationship to the availability of birth control, see James Reed,
From Private Vice to Public Virtue: The Birth Control Movement and American Society Since 1830
(New York: Basic Books, 1978); Brodie,
Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth Century America
, 2; Gordon,
The Moral Property of Women
, 22; Tone,
Devices and Desires
, 68.

52
. Quoted in Tone,
Devices and Desires
, 103.

53
. Tone,
Devices and Desires
, 105.

54
. Tone,
Devices and Desires
, 106–8.

55
. Tone,
Devices and Desires
, 127.

56
. Tone,
Devices and Desires
, 126, 293 (note 4).

57
. Quoted in Lawrence M. Friedman,
Crime and Punishment in American History
(New York: Basic Books, 1993), 326.

58
. David J. Langum,
Crossing over the Line: Legislating Morality and the Mann Act
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 18.

59
. George Kibbe Turner, “The City of Chicago: A Study of the Great Immoralities,”
McClure’s Magazine
28 (April 1907): 581–82.

60
. George Kibbe Turner, “The Daughters of the Poor: A Plain Story of the Development of New York City as a Leading Centre of the White Slave Trade of the World, under Tammany Hall,”
McClure’s Magazine
34 (November 1909): 45–61.

61
. For more detailed accounts, see Brian Donovan,
White Slave Crusades: Race, Gender, and Anti-Vice Activism, 1887–1917
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006); Langum,
Crossing over the Line
, 33–34; Amy R. Lagler,
“For God’s Sake, Do Something”: White Slavery Narratives and Moral Panic in Turn-of-the-Century American Cities
(Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, 2000).

62
. Edwin W. Sims, “White Slave Trade,” in Ernest A. Bell, ed.,
Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls, or War on the White Slave Trade
(s.n. 1910), 57.

63
. Quoted in “To Curb White Slavery; Taft Consulted on Plan to Reach Traffic Through Inter-State Commerce Law,”
New York Times
, 25 November 1909.

64
. State of the Union Address of William H. Taft, 7 December 1909.

65
. Quoted in Langum,
Crossing over the Line
, 28.

66
. Langum notes that “The transportation of adult, willing prostitutes would always constitute the great bulk of Mann Act prosecutions.” See Langum,
Crossing over the Line
, 48.

67
. Langum,
Crossing over the Line
, 4, and
chapter 3
.

68
. Quoted in Langum,
Crossing over the Line
, 33.

69
. Morone,
Hellfire Nation
, 257.

1
. See Aristide Zolberg,
A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). Zolberg emphasizes that America’s early efforts to regulate immigration have often been overlooked because this was handled at the state level rather than by the federal government until the 1880s.

2
. This is celebrated by Hernando De Soto as an overlooked success story in the development of capitalism in the United States. See De Soto,
The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else
(New York: Basic Books, 2000),
chapter 5
.

3
. Quoted in De Soto,
The Mystery of Capital
, 122.

4
. Quoted in De Soto,
The Mystery of Capital
, 124.

5
. See Joel Achebach, “George Washington’s Western Adventure,”
Washington Post
, 6 June 2004.

6
. See Andrew R. L. Cayton,
The Frontier Republic: Ideology and Politics in the Ohio Country, 1780–1825
(Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1986), especially
chapter 1
.

7
. Cited in Mark T. Kanazawa, “Possession Is Nine Points of the Law: The Political Economy of Early Public Land Disposal,”
Explorations in Economic History
33, no. 2 (April 1996): 230.

8
. See, for example, Roy M. Robbins, “Preemption: A Frontier Triumph,”
Mississippi Valley Historical Review
18, no. 3 (December 1931): 331–49.

9
. Gregory H. Nobles,
American Frontiers: Cultural Encounters and Continental Conquest
(New York: Hill & Wang, 1997), 141.

10
. Zolberg,
A Nation by Design
, 176, 181. The March 1868 treaty between the United States and China stipulated the right of Chinese to emigrate and to work in the United States.

11
. The nation’s Chinese population increased from fewer than ten thousand in 1850 to more than a hundred thousand in 1880.

12
. On the importance of the Page law in the initiation of federal immigration control, see Kerry Abrams, “Polygamy, Prostitution, and the Federalization of Immigration Law,”
Columbia Law Review
105, no. 3 (April 2005): 641–716.

13
. According to some accounts, this turned into a sophisticated transnational business. See Robert Chao Romero, “Transnational Immigrant Smuggling to the United States via Mexico and Cuba, 1882–1916,”
Amerasia Journal
30, no. 3 (2004/2005): 11–12.

14
. See, for instance, Tung Chin,
Paper Son: One Man’s Story
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000). See also Erika Lee,
At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration During the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 203–4.

15
. Quoted in Lee,
At America’s Gate
, 202.

16
. Clifford Alan Perkins,
Border Patrol: With the Immigration Service on the Mexican Boundary, 1910–54
(El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1978), 13.

17
. Carl E. Prince and Mollie Keller,
The U.S. Customs Service: A Bicentennial History
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Treasury, 1989), 176–77.

18
. Lee,
At America’s Gate
, 214–16.

19
. Quoted in Lee,
At America’s Gates
, 43.

20
. Adam M. McKeown notes that at the turn of the century China was the only country in the world where it was required to obtain an immigration visa from a U.S. consulate. See McKeown,
Melancholy Order: Asian
Migration and the Globalization of Borders
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 224.

21
. For a more detailed discussion, see John Torpey,
The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 96–100.

22
. Daniel J. Tichenor makes the more general point that efforts to control immigration, regardless of effectiveness, have “produced significant national state-building in U.S. political history.” See Tichenor,
Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 7.

23
. On the importance of the Chinese exclusion laws in building up the nation’s initial immigration control machinery, see especially Lee,
At America’s Gates
, 22.